Peace Corps

• Subject(s): Language Arts & Literature, Environment & Health, Cross-Cultural Understanding
• Grade Level(s): 6–8, 9–12

Overview

As a Peace Corps Volunteer assigned to the village of Wanzuzu, students playing the Peace Corps Challenge game are faced with many challenges they must solve using realistic solutions. In this challenge, students are asked by the Mayor to help find the source that is causing many in the village to become ill. By visiting the farm and interviewing members of Gunari's family and other community members, students learn of many unsanitary practices and possible causes for so many becoming ill. They suggest causes for the illness, as well as possible solutions the community could adopt to help make everyone in the village healthy.

Background Information

Factoids from the game:

Lack of sufficient water and sanitation has resulted in the poor health of both adults and children. This lack of adequate water and sanitation has impacted the earnings of adults and the schooling of children. Women and girls are responsible for collecting water and are particularly impacted. Source: United Nations

About 2.6 billion people, including children, live without basic sanitation - plumbing and clean water. Source: United Nations

Many Peace Corps Volunteers work specifically on water and sanitation issues. They work with their community on a wide range of projects, including hygiene education; tapping springs; constructing and protecting wells; and improving facilities for storing drinking water. Source: Peace Corps

Procedures

Explore the Sanitation and Disease WebQuest

Play the Sanitation and Disease Challenge (Flash)

Additional Resources

Coverdell World Wise Schools:

• Lesson plan: Water: Source of Health, Source of Illness (Grades 5-8)
  Students will learn to appreciate the importance of clean water for the maintenance of good health.
• WebQuest: Eradicating Guinea Worm Disease
  Gather information about the causes and effects of Guinea worm disease, a waterborne illness affecting several countries in Africa.

Other Sources:

• UNICEF Voices of Youth: Water, Environment and Sanitation
• World Water Day
• World Health Organization: Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Safe Water Systems

Framework and Standards

Enduring Understandings

• Illness often can be avoided by maintaining sanitary conditions.
• Lack of access to clean water and sanitation has many negative impacts on a community.
• In order to maintain health, communities should strive to maintain clean water sources and sanitary conditions.

Essential Questions

• What are some ways communities without access to clean water and sanitation are impacted?
• What sanitary conditions are needed within a community to maintain the health of its members?

Standards

Social Studies:

Thematic Strand I: Culture

• How culture influences the ways in which human groups solve problems of daily living
• How people from different cultures develop different ways of interpreting experience
• Language, behaviors and beliefs can both contribute and pose barriers to cross-cultural understanding

Thematic Strand III: People, Places, and Environments

• Human modifications of the environment

Thematic Strand IX: Global Connections

• The causes and consequences of various types of global connections
• The actions of people, communities, and nations have both short and long term effects

Thematic Strand X: Civic Ideals and Practices

• Perspectives of various stakeholders in proposing possible solutions to issues

Geography:

Essential Element II: Places and Regions

• Physical and human characteristics of places

Science:

Content Standard F: Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

• Personal health
• Personal and community health
• Natural and human-induced hazards
• Natural resources
• Environmental quality